Greetings in Christ, all!
We continue to get wonderful follow-up questions from the State of the Parish letter as well as our building project. I’d like to use this time to get after some of those.
First, I’ve been asked why we are pushing the building project on if money is so tight?
It’s a great question and, honestly, the most basic answer is that we were more or less pot committed to this once we started the campaign a few years ago. Since I arrived, I’ve heard a lot of pain from God’s People here at Holy Family about what seemed like a few delays. They gave money to a project they believed would start in July of 2018 and were starting to feel like it was never going to happen. So, we’re diving in…trusting the Lord and His providence.
Taking the houses down next to the parish is expensive. Why are we doing that if money is tight?
Another great question! The big thing is that which I shared in the bulletin a couple weeks before Easter: the only cost we are going to have for the removal of the houses is asbestos abatement and disposal of the remains of the houses. The rest is a donation, praise God! The houses were at the point where repairing them to meet code was going to cost much, much more than we could afford.
What specific things are you doing with the budget to save costs?
I think the biggest savings we were able to make was to stop the planned purchase of a house to the North of our property. That was a big savings and the reasoning behind buying it didn’t seem solid enough to sustain the financial sacrifice.
Beyond that, I just got out of a meeting where we have cut over $100,000 from the budget in numerous small ways that frankly, I don’t have the space to take care of here. The finance council has been amazing in helping us do this. Our budget will be smaller than the budgets for the last few years. These are things we’ve done beyond the ways I listed two weeks ago.
I’m a school parent and want to make sure I am doing my part donations wise in order to receive the parishioner’s rate for school tuition: how do I figure that out?
To be clear, we don’t have a hard formula: I would fear us moving to a “Pay to pray” system that some parishes have embraced.
The biblical standard is 10% of our income should go to charity and if you are capable of that, great. If not, 5% is what some people do.
In the end, I promise you that I will always give my best and I ask the same of you. Sacrifice in the ways you can and do not worry about the ways you can’t. Do your best and God will get us where we need to be! If you want to talk about it, make sure to chat with our business manager, Brian Kita. He’s the brains of that particular outfit. 🙂
I’m so touched by the amazing response and the great energy that we have about our Renovation: this is going to be amazing. In the meantime, thank you for your encouragement and your questions, I hope you find this all helpful.
I am so very blessed to be your priest,
Fjk
